Danehy

It's a little embarrassing to be an Arizonan right now

I've been an Arizonan most of my life. I grew up in Southern
California, and Arizona always held a certain mystique for
me—wide-open spaces, a certain raw energy and a promise for the
future. When I was in high school, one of my teachers brought a stack
of Arizona Highways magazines for us to look at. I'm not a
nature guy (or a photography guy, either), but I thought it was
amazing.

I remember sitting next to one of my knucklehead tennis teammates.
(Yeah, I played tennis, too; so what? My older sisters made me learn
how so we could play doubles.) He said, "Why don't they have a
California Highways?" I thought, "What an idiot!" OK, here's
a picture of gridlock near San Jose. Here's an aerial shot of Dodger
Stadium where the game is in the third inning, and two-thirds of the
paying customers are still on the Hollywood Freeway. Oh, and here's a
nifty shot from Chula Vista. If you look beyond all those people who
are climbing over that fence, you can see the studios where Wolfman
Jack does his nightly 500,000-watt radio broadcast.

When I was offered a scholarship to play basketball in Arizona
(albeit at a juco down on the Mexican border), I jumped at the
opportunity. Well, maybe "jumped" is too strong of a word here, but I
reached for it with all my might. Within the first few days in Arizona
(in the heat of summer), I knew this was the place for me.

Over the years, I've been proud to call myself an Arizonan. There's
a certain cachet to it. You bump into somebody back East and tell them
that you're from Arizona, and their eyes light up. "Oh, I love Arizona!
Have you ever been to Sedona?"

To which the answer is, "No, Sen. McCain. I can't afford it."

To be sure, there have been times when it was not so cool to be
identified with Arizona. There was the "no MLK holiday" era, punctuated
by Evan Mecham's tenure in the governor's office. I told my
out-of-state friends that we were going through a brief period of
R.I.P. (Rednecks In Power).

Still, I have been mostly proud to be called an Arizonan. These days
... I'm not quite as proud.

First off, there is the (seen-around-the-world) disturbing image of
that jackoff who showed up outside the building where President Obama
was addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. The idiot was
armed with a handgun on his hip and some big-ass semi-automatic thing
across his back. Dude, all that hardware still ain't gonna make you
feel any power between your legs.

After the fact, they claimed it was just a publicity stunt, but who
would do such a thing, and why? Get some Poindexter-lookin' black guy;
dress him up like a Mormon on a mission; and have him strut around
outside a presidential speech with guns ... what could possibly be the
point?

A couple of gun nuts wrote to The Arizona Republic and said
that they openly carry guns in public because they can. Really? I can
piss in my backyard any time I want, but I don't, mostly because my
parents weren't related to each other before they got married. Just
because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

I wish that guy's mom had shown up and smacked him upside his fat
head. You know, just as a publicity stunt.

Even well-known local gun fetishist Emil Franzi (my radio co-host)
doesn't see why somebody would do something like that. Emil was born in
the 1940s. Seven of the first nine presidents in his lifetime were shot
at, shot and wounded or killed, or became president at least in part
because of gun violence. Seventy-seven percent is a pretty crappy stat
for a democratic country that is supposed to be the beacon of freedom
for the entire world and one in which some of its citizens claim that
their gun ownership guarantees that freedom.

I'm sorry, there's just no good reason for somebody to take a gun to
a presidential appearance. None.

Almost infinitely more embarrassing than that clown is Arizona's
criminally inept state Legislature. At press time, the Senate still
hadn't delivered a viable state budget. By law, they're supposed to do
it by June, and we're coming up on Labor Day. And it's not like it's
political gridlock: Republicans control everything, except their urges
to kiss Grover Norquist's ass.

They all want to run for re-election while being able to claim they
didn't raise taxes—even while Arizona burned. There's just so
much political posturing going on that it looks like a yoga class for
really out-of-shape white people.

And finally, a hearty boo to State Sen. Al Melvin. I mentioned
recently that he introduced a bill making it illegal to text while
driving. Astonishingly, it didn't pass. In the same column, I said that
the feds are considering withholding federal highways funds to states
that don't pass such a bill in the near future. Turns out Captain Al is
against that, because of "states' rights." That's the catch-all that,
among other things, allowed some people to own other people for the
first century of our country's existence.

Whoever makes texting while driving illegal, good for them. I'm not
all that particular regarding which government entity saves my
life.